With the recent freezing weather, burst water pipes have been involved in thousands of claims. Here are two recent blog posts from the Merlin Group, a policyholder law firm:

This reminded me that I’ve also blogged about a couple of freezing claims:

There are many policy interpretation lessons in these four blog posts, including:

Insurance is not a commodity…policy language is different among insurers and even minor differences in form language can result in major differences in coverage, as discussed (along with other issues) in the Merlin blog posts above.

The best way to resolve a claim dispute is to prevent the claim denial by properly insuring the exposure, as I discuss in my first blog post above.

Policy language usually trumps logic, as demonstrated by the bizarre hot tub claim discussed in my second blog post above.

By the way, these issues and many, many more are addressed in my monthly series of articles and webinars for the Insurance Journal and its Academy of Insurance.  The articles are free and can be accessed at InsuranceJournal.com. The companion series of webinars is available here. The best deal for the webinars is becoming a member of the Academy. That gives you access to the entire series plus almost 250 other webinars, as well as other resources. Missed my January and February webinars? They’re recorded so you can catch up if you become a member and sign up for my next webinar in March.

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Bill Wilson

Founder at InsuranceCommentary.com
One of the premier insurance educators in America on form, coverage, and technical issues; Founder and director of the Big “I” Virtual University; Retired Assoc. VP of Education and Research from Independent Insurance Agents & Brokers of America. Reprint Request Information